Victimization and agency
Jul. 8th, 2015 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwaterspark"A victim may act within a larger environment of psychological and physical coercion but still exercise some limited will nonetheless."
"A simple mythology that assumes naïve victimhood fails to grapple with the reality of the trafficking victim's complex identity and psychological state – one in which the survivor may be both victim and individual actor. . . . A trafficking victim's exercise of choice in this context does not diminish the conditions of exploitation under which she chooses."
- Jayashri Srikantiah, "Perfect Victims and Real Survivors: The Iconic Victim in Domestic Human Trafficking Law"
For my summer internship, I've been doing a lot of reading on sex work and sex trafficking, which has inevitably led me back to a topic in fiction that I've spent a lot of time thinking about: victimization and agency. (*Please note: The kind of victimization I will be discussing excludes sexual assault and abuse.)
Probably the poster child for this debate—and the subject of much of the fanfiction I wrote last year—is Bucky Barnes from the Captain America comics and the Winter Soldier movie. In short, I disagreed with much of the Tumblr fandom regarding Bucky's characterization, which is why I ended up leaving. The fundamental disagreement I had with the wider fandom has to do with the subject of Srikantiah's article: the idea that victimization can be a complex situation that does not exclude all forms of agency.
Honestly, I really hate the way the discourse about victimization gets polarized, because it has some really unpleasant implications. In a rush to avoid blaming the victim for actions they took while they were not fully in control of their situation, people start to paint the victim as this perfect, angelic saint who was completely helpless and had zero agency at all. And if people want to interpret the character as being less than perfect, or having had the capacity to undertake morally ambiguous actions all along, those people are accused of victim-blaming.
First of all—and I'm a little incredulous that I have to spell this out—you can talk about a victim being a flawed person and having the capacity to do bad things without blaming them for their victimization. It's disheartening to see people so oversimplify this issue.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly: there's a reason why some people (*cough*like me*coughcough*) spend so much time and energy delving into the moral grayness, flaws, and imperfections of characters who have experienced victimization. That reason is a refusal to separate victims into "good" victims and "bad" victims, or "real victims" and "fake victims"/"not victims at all." It is a revolt against the idea of a "perfect victim," which I consider to be harmful because of the moral dichotomy it creates and the way in which it creates a template, stereotypical victim which may cause actual victims to be excluded if they don't fit that perfect model.
Insisting that characters who are victimized cannot be morally gray, cannot be flawed, cannot have personal problems, and cannot be said to have exercised any agency whatsoever reinforces the simplistic binary between "completely free agent" and "helpless passive victim" that for the most part does not reflect reality. In real life, few people will fall into a case where they either have complete agency or no agency at all—many people exist in the gray area where their choices are constrained (sometimes severely), but they can still make a choice.
In real life, the idea of the "perfect victim" has serious consequences. In cases dealing with intimate partner violence, the "battered woman syndrome" defense isn't available if the jury believes that the wife theoretically had enough agency to leave. In cases dealing with possible human trafficking, judges are sometimes less likely to believe the defendant was a victim of human trafficking if they don't act like a perfect victim.
Why is it important in fiction to recognize the complexity of victimization and agency? For someone who may be dealing with a lot of personal and emotional problems—such as low self-esteem or depression—there is something powerful in a story that presents a character who is flawed but not "evil," and yet can still be redeemed and deserve a happy ending. When you are in a state of mind where all you can see in yourself is flaws and failures and a horrible, ugly, writhing mass of darkness, the idea that only perfect people are worthy of salvation makes you despair. But seeing that a character who did bad things while they were victimized is capable of being healed can give you hope in turn.
Finally, when people spend too much time focusing on what happened to a victim, rather than how the victim survived, the story downplays the character's resilience. In the worst cases, it can become a case of fetishization or even something approaching torture porn, focusing on the character as the object of some extreme, shocking trauma rather than a three-dimensional person who has hopes and dreams, and may stumble and falter and make mistakes, but still has the will to go on.
"A simple mythology that assumes naïve victimhood fails to grapple with the reality of the trafficking victim's complex identity and psychological state – one in which the survivor may be both victim and individual actor. . . . A trafficking victim's exercise of choice in this context does not diminish the conditions of exploitation under which she chooses."
- Jayashri Srikantiah, "Perfect Victims and Real Survivors: The Iconic Victim in Domestic Human Trafficking Law"
For my summer internship, I've been doing a lot of reading on sex work and sex trafficking, which has inevitably led me back to a topic in fiction that I've spent a lot of time thinking about: victimization and agency. (*Please note: The kind of victimization I will be discussing excludes sexual assault and abuse.)
Probably the poster child for this debate—and the subject of much of the fanfiction I wrote last year—is Bucky Barnes from the Captain America comics and the Winter Soldier movie. In short, I disagreed with much of the Tumblr fandom regarding Bucky's characterization, which is why I ended up leaving. The fundamental disagreement I had with the wider fandom has to do with the subject of Srikantiah's article: the idea that victimization can be a complex situation that does not exclude all forms of agency.
Honestly, I really hate the way the discourse about victimization gets polarized, because it has some really unpleasant implications. In a rush to avoid blaming the victim for actions they took while they were not fully in control of their situation, people start to paint the victim as this perfect, angelic saint who was completely helpless and had zero agency at all. And if people want to interpret the character as being less than perfect, or having had the capacity to undertake morally ambiguous actions all along, those people are accused of victim-blaming.
First of all—and I'm a little incredulous that I have to spell this out—you can talk about a victim being a flawed person and having the capacity to do bad things without blaming them for their victimization. It's disheartening to see people so oversimplify this issue.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly: there's a reason why some people (*cough*like me*coughcough*) spend so much time and energy delving into the moral grayness, flaws, and imperfections of characters who have experienced victimization. That reason is a refusal to separate victims into "good" victims and "bad" victims, or "real victims" and "fake victims"/"not victims at all." It is a revolt against the idea of a "perfect victim," which I consider to be harmful because of the moral dichotomy it creates and the way in which it creates a template, stereotypical victim which may cause actual victims to be excluded if they don't fit that perfect model.
Insisting that characters who are victimized cannot be morally gray, cannot be flawed, cannot have personal problems, and cannot be said to have exercised any agency whatsoever reinforces the simplistic binary between "completely free agent" and "helpless passive victim" that for the most part does not reflect reality. In real life, few people will fall into a case where they either have complete agency or no agency at all—many people exist in the gray area where their choices are constrained (sometimes severely), but they can still make a choice.
In real life, the idea of the "perfect victim" has serious consequences. In cases dealing with intimate partner violence, the "battered woman syndrome" defense isn't available if the jury believes that the wife theoretically had enough agency to leave. In cases dealing with possible human trafficking, judges are sometimes less likely to believe the defendant was a victim of human trafficking if they don't act like a perfect victim.
Why is it important in fiction to recognize the complexity of victimization and agency? For someone who may be dealing with a lot of personal and emotional problems—such as low self-esteem or depression—there is something powerful in a story that presents a character who is flawed but not "evil," and yet can still be redeemed and deserve a happy ending. When you are in a state of mind where all you can see in yourself is flaws and failures and a horrible, ugly, writhing mass of darkness, the idea that only perfect people are worthy of salvation makes you despair. But seeing that a character who did bad things while they were victimized is capable of being healed can give you hope in turn.
Finally, when people spend too much time focusing on what happened to a victim, rather than how the victim survived, the story downplays the character's resilience. In the worst cases, it can become a case of fetishization or even something approaching torture porn, focusing on the character as the object of some extreme, shocking trauma rather than a three-dimensional person who has hopes and dreams, and may stumble and falter and make mistakes, but still has the will to go on.
